


the real

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (a bit), Dry Humping, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Sparring, Speculation, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 04:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9863090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Coulson gets a rematch, but it's so different from the first time they sparred.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



It’s different.

He doesn’t know how to explain it.

It had felt so real before. 

When you’re in it, you think it’s as real as it gets, that’s the trick. That was the problem. At first you remember how reality used to feel, but then as time went on it was harder to tell the difference. Until there was no difference.

He had been impressed at first. The replication had seemed _so real_. The details. He could smell the sweat.

But now, now that he was tasting the real thing, he wonders how he was ever fooled by the machine.

The sweat smells different here. And the way he can feel his own sweat forming in small yet heavy beads at the back of his neck… it’s like he has missed it.

After all this time it’s like he’s getting intoxicated, absolutely high on it, the sensation.

Of course, there’s the matter of -

“Ouch,” he says in a higher pitch he intended to, when he miscalculates and Daisy’s kick makes contact almost squarely above his kidney.

The pain is also real, a lot realer than the first time around.

Daisy winces, mouthing “I’m sorry” even though it’s absurd, she did what she’s supposed to, and she was better than him.

In general, she is better than him at this.

It hurts his pride a bit, but only just a bit. 

When she connects a splendid punch to his nose Coulson is mostly proud that he saw what an amazing SHIELD agent she would make, years before she even learned to punch like this. He can’t take credit for anything she is, but he can take credit for the _knowing_.

It somehow softens the blow.

Pun intended.

“Today is not my day, it seems,” he says, feeling his nose. It’s okay. Nothing broken. Just hurts.

“I’m sorry,” she says, tilting her head to try and see if there’s been some damage.

He waves her apology away, getting into stance again and smiling at her.

It’s weird to think he hadn’t used a sparring partner for ages, and in a relative short time he’s been on the mats with Daisy of all people twice. He’s not sure why he thinks “Daisy _of all people_ ”.

There are so many differences.

Things he didn’t notice the first time they did this. Or things he couldn’t notice because it wasn’t real.

He missed how small Daisy’s hands are, but how strong their grip. Vicious really. Daisy’s wrists.

He missed the way her breathing sounds when she is slowing it down by sheer will force, a trick learnt long ago under desperation, and now so natural to her that he’s sure she doesn’t even notice she’s doing it.

He missed the way he can feel it when her feet move over the mats, circling him like a shark.

This is all new.

And the rest, it’s nothing like the first time either. He didn’t think it would be - but he didn’t think it would be this different. Feeling each other’s bodies touching. He hadn’t been so conscious of it when they were in the simulation.

He’s not sure why he wanted to do this, so soon afterwards. He knows enough about psychology to know it has to do with his body having been disconnected from his mind for so long. With needing to feel things.Feeling things for real (there’s that word again) A punch in the face would do, apparently.

He also doesn’t know why Daisy has agreed to a rematch. She’s been keeping her head down since they all came back from… whatever they want to call that place. Their own minds. Keeping her head down more than usual, he means. They are all doing that, he guesses. Trying not to bump into each other.

Here they are, he and Daisy, breaking that silent rule, doing more than bumping into each other.

“What? No sucker-punching me today?” she taunts him.

Coulson grins while he protects his left. Ah, yes, the punch. That had been pretty underhanded of him, but then again his whole fighting style was underhanded. He learned pretty early on in the Academy that he was never going to be a genius fighter, so he needed to learn a way to stand his own against his rivals. 

“No flying either,” he comments. Wanting to say, this is better. Real is better, you know? Wanting to say, I should have done this ages ago. He suddenly can’t remember all the reasons why he never got involved in Daisy’s actual training. Why he simply made some comments to Ward in private as guidance. Why he watched her study for the Level 1 exam until late in the Bus, but never joined her to offer some help. Why he wasn’t there for her training with May. Why he had supported Daisy through it all, but never directly interfered. He truly doesn’t remember why all that distance.

And now she is the kind of agent who could easily wipe the floor with his ass in just a few seconds.

But not today.

She is holding back.

Which, it’s not like Daisy at all. 

So Coulson makes the stupid decision to try to get her to fight seriously.

Of course at the first sign of actual resistance Daisy acts on instinct and vibrates his ass onto the floor; okay not exactly the technical name of the maneuver, but that is the result.

“I thought we said no powers,” he says, from the floor.

Daisy shakes her head. “No, I’m pretty sure we didn’t say anything about that.”

He tries not to smile. Experiencing Daisy’s powers on him, even in a friendly albeit violent way, is not completely unpleasant. He’s seen some stuff in his life, which was the whole point of joining SHIELD. So feeling something that extraordinary and alien on his own skin… his ass might hurt a bit, but the little kid who devoured his dad’s Captain America’s comics in the garage, well, that kid is a little happy that his butt-ache is empirical proof that superheroes exist, and that they are close to him.

A little too close, right now.

He’s been daydreaming a bit - Daisy should get her own comicbook, she shouldn’t joke about that stuff - and she suddenly had him in an armlock. He decides that if it’s fair for her to use her powers then it’s okay for him to use his one and only advantage. It takes him a fraction of a second to choose what to use against her (he might not be a good fighter, but he’s a great strategist, if he may say so himself). Pushing the settings on his arm the prosthetic sends an electric current that startles Daisy into releasing him.

Coulson quickly steps back, not giving her time to recover.

She begins to open her mouth, and he is waiting for the pleasant comeback, about the rules saying he can’t use his robot hand, but she doesn’t say a word, she gives his prosthetic a split-of-a-second glance and she recovers her stance. 

I see, Coulson thinks.

Daisy is still not comfortable talking about, even addressing the loss of his hand.

“Come on,” he says, getting a bit annoyed. “Training doesn’t actually help unless you’re serious.”

It hits a nerve.

He didn’t think it would. After all these years, after everything she has proven to herself and everyone else. Daisy still fears people not thinking she is committed. Committed to what? Anything.

This.

And the next thing he knows is Daisy is running across the mats and into him at high speed, with a fierce and pissed off look on her face and for a moment Coulson worries for his life. It’s absurd, Daisy would never hurt him (Daisy has hurt him before, but the proposition Daisy would never hurt him is still true as far as he’s concerned) but god does she look intimidating.

She miscalculates, jumping into the kick a moment too late, and instead she just awkward bumps into Coulson at full force, knocking him to the floor and then falling right on top of him.

Definitely not a simulation, in case there was any doubt.

In case there was any doubt: Daisy’s powerful weight, and the ache in his ribcage that follows. They wrestle through their pain, until Daisy gets the upper hand.

“Ouch.”

“Ouch.”

“I said it first.”

They both get the air knocked out of them and wince as Daisy props herself on her hands. 

They laugh, together, surprised at the shock of the fall, and the absurdity of the position.

Daisy grabs onto his shoulders for balance, but neither move away from the other.

They both stop laughing at the same time and Daisy is so close her nose is almost touching Coulson’s and Coulson swallows because suddenly she’s looking at him with hard, unrelenting eyes.

“Do you hate me?” Daisy asks, out of nowhere, her face twisted like she knows the answer will be yes.

Coulson frowns, her words packing more punch than anything else she did to beat him up this morning - well, almost, she really did beat him.

“Why would I hate you?”

It’s hard to ask, hard to think what to say, when she still has him pinned down to the floor, legs locking him at the knee, and her chest pressing down on his.

“I took it from you,” she says. “You looked so happy back there in the framework and I… I just forced you out.”

He understands Daisy avoiding everybody these days a little bit more.

She feels she took it away from him.

Everything he had ever wanted.

But it was not -

It was just -

Daisy’s head falls for a moment, her chin pressed to Coulson’s chest.

The fantasy had been perfectly assembled but it made no sense. In this other world his father had never died, and he had grown a boring, happy childhood in Wisconsin. There was no SHIELD, or he wasn’t in it, but there was still Audrey and both their kids had her eyes. Like a puzzle were the pieces were forced together, it only made sense because he was forced to make sense of it. Because his own brain was forcing him to make sense of it. 

Or rather: his own brain was forcing him _not to care_ if it didn’t make sense.

That’s the thing about the real world: Daisy’s despair at thinking she stole something from him will always make sense, a horrible kind of sense, and nothing has to force it, it’s as natural as the hopeless feeling in his stomach when he sees her sad, self-recriminating eyes.

“No, no,” he tries to reassure her. They’d all be dead if she hadn’t pulled the plug on it all, and the world heading for doom, probably. But Daisy is not thinking about that - she’s thinking about him and how she destroyed his fantasy life. Coulson moves his hand to her cheek. It’s wet with sweat, and hot from the exercise - and soft and real and he brushes his thumb across it, down to her chin, distracted by the feel it, wanting to touch Daisy as much as he wants to comfort her. “You saved my life,” he tells her.

Now he knows was Daisy agreed to this so easily, what there was this feeling when she said “yes” that she was trying to make it up to him, for something Coulson couldn’t put his finger on.

He hopes he looks at grateful as he feels, about her saving his life. Again. His real life.

He watches her press her lips together, a subtle gesture, she’s unconvinced. She thought that had been happiness for him but - the point of the program was to stop you from fighting. It wasn’t happiness it offered him, it was contentment. The program didn’t need him to be happy. Coulson drifted to contentment naturally. The program only needed to make sure of one thing to stop him from fighting the fantasy; it had to make sure Daisy Johnson wasn’t in that life.

But by that same rule, there couldn’t be real happiness. Just contentment. Tailored, nice, comfortable. Perfect. But not happy.

“You saved me,” he tells her.

Which is not the same as saving his life.

Daisy seems to understand the difference too, and gives him a small smile, a hint of relief. She really has been thinking he could hate her, resent her for her choice. Her choice to reject paradise.

His fingers skim over her forehead, pushing the hair aside.

Then, like drawing a breath, Coulson arches his back and lifts his head, his mouth connecting with Daisy’s.

This is different from last time, he thinks.

Definitely. (The voice in his head almost smug as it says this)

He can’t just smell the sweat better, he can smell Daisy’s shampoo underneath, and then underneath something familiar, something that wasn’t there in the fantasy, until she showed up on his door, and he got back this memory: her smell, even though he didn’t know what it was at the time, or how that strange woman on his porch was going to give it all back to him.

She didn’t take anything from him.

She returned a world to him.

Maybe that’s the reason he is kissing her now.

She gave him the whole world… how could you not fall in love with him? Maybe he had wanted to kiss her before it all, he just forgot about it.

Coulson is not sure what reason Daisy has to kiss him back, mouth greedy and fingers digging into his shoulders, like this is the last kiss she’s ever going to get.

Inside the fantasy everything was smooth; he remembers touching his wife, of course. It had been easy, everything fitting, even if Coulson realizes the contradiction in metaphors here. But this is not smooth; their limbs fall awkwards onto each other, they don’t fit at all.

He and Daisy, they have never fitted.

It hasn’t stopped them before.

It sure isn’t stopping them now, desperate kisses and sweat and teeth and hands feeling through the fabric of their training clothes.

Daisy’s lips are warm and there’s a salty taste of sweat somewhere - Coulson wants to commit everything to memory, because even though they are kissing slowly and purposely and open-mouthed it’s all so full of hunger he feels like it’s all slipping through his fingers very fast, every sensation is pushed away to make room for a new one, like the feeling of Daisy’s eyelashes against his skin, or her tongue pushing aggressively into his mouth, her hip pressed against his groin. He wants to say her name, but he doesn’t want to stop kissing her.

It’s like the answer to a question he never ask.

Funny, because he has asked so many questions.

Everything has felt so odd and out of balance until now, even before the whole fake reality trip they all took; it was when Daisy left last year, nothing has felt entirely real - he hates how much he is going to be using this word - and too much has happened. So many possibilities open for him, but he never thought of this one.

The experience in the framework has made them more intimate that they could have been. They had been in each other’s heads, literally. She had seen his fantasies and he had seen Daisy’s (he will always remember the image of Jiaying, without scars, Daisy wanting something for her mother more than for herself). This doesn’t feel as dramatic as it would have months ago. It doesn’t feel as inappropriate.

Daisy grinds down on his lap, needy and Coulson smiles - he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so openly wanting something, nevermind that this something seems to be him (nevermind because it scares the shit out of him, but of course it also makes him feel more special than he’s ever felt, just because Daisy is). He angles his hips to give her easier access. He’s not hard yet, because he’s not a teenager (despite what his thudding heart is trying to make him believe) but there’s a nice vibration in that southern region and it has nothing to do with Daisy’s powers and… he needs to stop talking - or stop thinking - right now. It’s a good thing Daisy is not in his head right now, and she wouldn’t want to touch him again.

He wonders what kind of thoughts are going through Daisy’s head right now. He can feel her thinking _a lot_. Which is very like Daisy, and it makes him feel a bit of relief. This is not normal - they are making out on the gym floor while they were supposed to be training and he is him and she is Daisy - but at least her reactions seem to be. He squeezes her neck gently as he pulls her even closer, her body sliding over his hipbone, until Daisy lets out a moan that makes him bite down on her bottom lip.

Okay, maybe this is enough for now.

For this second, he means.

He grabs her by the shoulders; they glisten with sweat and he feels it on his fingertips, so real, and where he earlier thought about these details as fantastic and comforting because they meant he was home, now he thinks of it, the feel of Daisy’s skin under his hand, as wonderful and sexy because it means _he’s home_. He gives her one long kiss before pulling her apart, holding her up so he can see her face, and more importantly, so she can see his eyes looking at her.

She looks confused, and the darkened lips and the pink cheeks, god, she’s really cute, isn’t she? He knew Daisy could be many things… but cute? Maybe Daisy can be everything, after all. Yes, that would explain things.

Coulson gets distracted, thinking about Daisy’s cuteness and her reddened lips and wondering why he isn’t kissing her again, and he almost forgets what he meant to tell her. She shifts her weight just a tiny bit and her knee presses between Coulson’s legs and he remember.

“We should probably move this somewhere else,” he says, trying to keep a bit of mystery between them at least. Or maybe it’s pride. “Before it gets a little too real.”

Daisy snorts.

“I can’t believe you just said that. I might have lost all interest.”

“Have you?” Coulson challenges her.

“Mmm, let me check,” she says.

She moves her hand to his temple, scraping her nails gently along his hairline. She dips her head (she does it slowly but it goes so fast, too fast, for him) and kisses him.

This is different, he thinks.

Tender.

This wasn’t in his fantasy world.

Because Daisy wasn’t.

The kiss is soft and tentative and more like a first kiss than what they did before. It’s a whole new side to her. And it makes sense. It makes sense like a piece missing from a puzzle, the one with just the right shape.

She pulls back and smiles at him and it’s like he’s never seen her smile before.

“Still interested,” she declares, like he might need to hear the actual words (he might), or like she wants him to hear them.

She gets up and pulls him with her, fingers entwined with his.

He hesitates.

“What’s wrong?” Daisy asks, not letting go of his hand.

He looks at her.

She’s Daisy.

This doesn’t make sense, exactly.

She’s… everything.

“Are we sure I’m not trapped inside another fantasy?” he asks.

Of course if she were just part of the fantasy she couldn’t answer honestly.

Daisy chuckles.

He can feel the vibrations in his hand as it is held by her.

“Coulson, I’m really flattered but…” she shakes her head, but she’s blushing, so she means it about being flattered. “Does this feel anything other than real?”

She squeezes his hand.

Coulson is about to protest that the other place had felt real too.

But he smells the sweat, and underneath Daisy’s shampoo, and underneath something familiar. Something he would remember in any world.

And no, this doesn’t feel anything like that other “real”.

This feels true.


End file.
